Today I learnt about a famous 1954 study called ‘They saw a game’.
Albert Hastorf and Hadley Cantril had Dartmouth and Princeton students watch a game of “penalty-ridden” football.
When asked about the game, students from each side mainly saw the fouls committed by the other team.
The students saw the same game, but they were looking for different things.
It’s a sobering insight. This was a game where there were zero consequences to having a biased viewpoint. But what happens when we extrapolate these behaviours to complex political, societal, social, and moral contexts?
It’s a reminder that we all carry biases when we’re watching our own games.